Saturday, December 31, 2016

Millions of people around the world went to the polls this year. The results provided plenty of surprises. British voters defied the pollsters and voted to leave the European Union. Colombians did much the same in rejecting their government’s peace deal with FARC, though Colombia’s president found a way to complete the deal a few months later without a vote. The biggest electoral surprise of all might have been in the United States, where Donald Trump defied the political experts and defeated Hillary Clinton. Perhaps 2017 will produce similarly surprising results. Here are ten elections to watch.

* New Year’s speech focuses on reforms to help more people
* Nation will adhere to peaceful development in new year: Xi

Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country will deepen reforms as he vowed to safeguard its sovereignty and maritime interests in 2017, a year that will present fresh international and domestic challenges for the leaders in Beijing.

In a New Year’s speech published Saturday by Xinhua, Xi said the outcome of reforms should benefit more people and he vowed to address difficulties in areas such as employment, education, health care and housing. He also said the country adheres to peaceful development and resolutely safeguards its sovereignty and maritime interests.

“Chinese people will not agree to whoever that wants to make trouble on this,” Xi said in the annual address, referring to the country’s sovereignty rights and maritime interests. China’s claims to territory in the South China Sea have been contested by other nations.

WNU Editor: Everyone that I know in China is nervous right now. No specific reason why .... but there is a sense in China right now that the country's steady rise for the past 25 years is now coming to an end. Tariffs, border disputes, a slowing economy, an Asian arms race, a changing of the guard in much of the Chinese leadership (with the exception of President Xi) .... 10 years ago none of these issues were present .... the focus was on growth and economic.political stability. Today ... the China of today is the complete opposite .... hence the reason why many Chinese are now nervous.

The leader of terror group Boko Haram instructs fighters to "kill, slaughter and abduct" in a new video message, according to the Associated Press.

"Kill all the infidels and detonate bombs everywhere," Abubakar Shekau says in the video. "Yes! I want you to kill, slaughter and abduct."

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari said earlier this week that “the terrorists are on the run,” claiming the military had pushed Boko Haram out of its last territory in the northeast part of the country.

* The gunmen appear to be wearing Santa costumes in CCTV footage
* The pair opened fire in the Reina nightclub, one of Istanbul's most popular venues
* The city's governor said 35 people were killed in the New Year's Eve attack
* A police officer is among the dead, Vasip Şahin revealed
* An estimated 17,000 police officers are believed to be on duty tonight in Istanbul
* Nightclub owner Mehmet Kocarslan said security had been stepped up after US intelligence warnings
* The celebrity haunt is popular with stars including Kevin Costner, Uma Thurman, Salma Hayek and Sting

Thirty five people have been killed in an armed attack in an Istanbul nightclub, the city's governor has revealed.

The gunman, believed to have been dressed in a Santa costume, opened fire inside the Reina nightclub in Istanbul's Ortaköy district, where hundreds were celebrating the New Year.

A further 40 people are thought to have been wounded in the attack, which has been captured in CCTV footage. It happened at 1.30am local time.

* Ukrainian soldiers using trenches to fight pro-Russian rebels in country's east
* Images show troops sheltering in icy man-made ditches near Luganske village
* It comes amid reports of gunfire between the two sides despite a recent truce

These are the crude battle trenches being used by Ukrainian troops on the front line in the fight against pro-Russian rebels.

In scenes reminiscent of the Second World War battle for Stalingrad, a soldier crouches down for shelter in the icy ditch near Luganske village in the east of the country.

Another image shows a fighter using the walls of the man-made trench as protection as he fires off rounds from a machine gun.

With the offensive to reclaim the Iraqi city of Mosul now in its third month, smartphones are everywhere on the battlefield, where the appetite for selfie photos is proving to be irresistible — and problematic.

Troops and commanders pose atop tanks, Humvees, checkpoints and even on the front lines with bullets flying. They snap pictures of themselves with a mix of generals, civilians, reporters, priests, doctors, babies and anything associated with the Islamic State, including flags, detainees and bodies.

They document themselves with reality-show glee clearing Islamic State tunnels, hoisting salvaged weapons, pointing to graffiti, prisoners and corpses. The photos are far from an official archive of events. But as questions arise about the Iraqi military's treatment of detainees and the bodies of dead fighters, amateur images may become evidence.

Human Rights Watch has cited the amateur photos and videos in complaints about extrajudicial executions of prisoners and other abuses during the offensive.

Three bombs killed 29 people in Baghdad on Saturday as fighting intensified in the northern city of Mosul, where Iraqi government forces are trying to rout Islamic State militants from their last major stronghold in the country.

Blasts, including one suicide attack, tore through a busy market in the Sinak neighborhood, police said. A pro-Islamic State news agency said the target was Shi'ite Muslims, whom the militants regard as apostates.

A third blast later in the day killed four people in the eastern New Baghdad district, where a minibus packed with explosives blew up in a busy commercial street, police and medics said.

Islamic State has continued to launch attacks in the heavily fortified capital, even after losing most of the northern and western territory it seized in 2014.

Two Berliners have developed a new database to catalogue and standardize video footage of atrocities in the war in Syria. The Syrian Archive was presented at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Hamburg.

Two young men working from their homes in Berlin with 3,000 euros ($3,130) in funding have created a database of atrocities in the Syrian war that is being used as a source by the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as lawyers and activists all around the world.

The Syrian Archive (syrianarchive.org), presented at the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg on Wednesday, has so far documented more than 2,200 illegal actions in the ongoing five-and-a-half-year civil war with the help of a network of volunteers around the world, and especially in Syria, who verify the material.

It’s not like the US hasn’t been accused of doing similar things recently.

Russian special operations forces, which have been increasingly modeled on those of the US, were critical in realizing the fall of Aleppo. The longtime rebel holdout has been blitzed by a surge of Russian and Syrian air power, Assad’s troops, Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters and Russian special operations forces since early November. This cocktail of capabilities proved far more than the rebels could handle, with the city falling officially on December 14th.

Photos and video of Russia’s special operations forces operating in Syria have trickled out over the last year or so, but leading up to and following the sacking of Aleppo we have seen more of them and heard how their abilities were applied to take Assad’s ultimate objective. These highly-trained units were used to advise Syrian and Hezbollah forces on tactics and strategy, to go after key leadership targets, to quickly fuse actionable intelligence with operations, and to help direct the brutal onslaught of air power that broke the city.

Syrian rebel groups threatened on Saturday to abandon a two-day-old truce if violations continued, and urged the U.N. Security Council not to endorse the deal until the Syrian government and its ally Russia had shown they would respect it.

The deal, brokered during the week by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides, reduced the level of violence, but firefights, air strikes and shelling continued in some areas.

Factions belonging to the Free Syrian Army - a loose alliance of militias excluding more radical Islamist groups - said government forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters had been trying to push rebels back in the Wadi Barada valley, northwest of Damascus.

(CNN)Sen. John McCain said Friday that Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election amounted to an "act of war."

The Arizona Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also has scheduled a hearing for next week on foreign cyberthreats to the US, which will also focus on Russian cyberhacking, a committee aide told CNN earlier Friday.

McCain, who is one of Washington's most prominent foreign policy hardliners, has criticized the recent sanctions and expulsions announced by the Obama administration this week as insufficient and belated. He made his latest comments in Ukraine, a nation threatened by a resurgent Russia, after meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

"When you attack a country, it's an act of war," McCain said of the recent hackings on Ukrainian TV, according to a transcript compiled by Reuters. "And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay so that we can perhaps persuade Russians to stop this kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy."

President Obama used his final weekly address in 2016 to assure Americans that he will remain committed to defending the "progress" made by his administration after handing over the White House to Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

Offering what might be the clearest indication yet of his plan to stay in the political scene post-presidency, Obama said Saturday, "As I prepare to take on the even more important role of citizen, know that I will be there with you every step of the way to ensure that this country forever strives to live up to the incredible promise of our founding — that all of us are created equal, and all of us deserve every chance to live out our dreams."

While the president initially indicated that he looked forward to a quiet retirement, at a time when many polls showed Democrat Hillary Clinton marching to victory in the presidential election, Obama has said his plans have changed since Trump ran away with the win.

WNU Editor: President Obama will always have an audience, and I am sure that many in the mainstream media will always run to him for his opinion on an issue .... doubly so since there is no "Democrat leader" on the stage. But he will no longer have the bully pulpit .... nor the same media coverage that he got as President. But unlike past Presidents .... he will be very active and visible .... and I predict that he will be opposing most (if not all) of President Trump's initiatives.

Putin has congratulated the American people in the person of US President-elect Donald Trump rather than outgoing US President Barack Obama

MOSCOW, December 30. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated the heads of the G7 Group of industrialized nations with Christmas and the coming New Year, the Kremlin press office reported on Friday.

The congratulatory messages address the leaders of the United Kingdom, including the British Queen, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States. Moreover, according to the congratulatory address, Putin congratulated the American people in the person of US President-elect Donald Trump rather than outgoing US President Barack Obama.

At the same time, Putin conveyed congratulations to Obama in a special statement on Russia’s response to a new wave of Washington’s anti-Russian sanctions.

Update #3: Russian President Putin did, however, include a very short greeting for Obama in a separate news release — the one announcing his decision not to retaliate for the sanctions imposed by the U.S. president.

“It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner,” Putin said. “Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.”

'China needs to know better about the world and the world needs to know better about China,' Xi says. But only the good stuff

China’s leading television network, CCTV, is launching a new global media platform aimed at rebranding the country. The announcement was made on the state-owned company’s website, but the force behind the initiative was made clear in comments from President Xi Jinping carried by Xinhua news agency.

“The relationship between China and the rest of the world is undergoing historic changes. China needs to know better about the world and the world needs to know better about China,” Xi said in a congratulatory letter to the China Global Television Network, as CCTV’s new arm will be called. Xi urged CGTN to “tell China stories well,” Xinhua reported.

CGTN will have six TV channels, three overseas branches, a video content provider and a digital media division, and will offer content in multiple languages, Xinhua said.

WNU Editor: The official announcement is here .... CCTV to launch CGTN (CCTV). I find CCTV good on covering international news stories that do not involve China. But when it does involve China .... a bias (propaganda) slant is all but guaranteed. Will this new "Global News Network" succeed .... probably. But as I have said more than once on this blog .... always be sceptical when checking out the news .... regardless of the source. The CGTN homepage is here .... CGTN.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen speaks on the phone with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump at her office in Taipei, Taiwan, in this handout photo made available December 3, 2016. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

China's military has become alarmed by what it sees as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's support of Taiwan and is considering strong measures to prevent the island from moving toward independence, sources with ties to senior military officers said.

Three sources said one possibility being considered was conducting war games near the self-ruled island that China considers as a breakaway province. Another was a series of economic measures to cripple Taiwan.

It was not clear whether any decisions had been taken, but the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Taiwan issue had become a hot topic within the upper echelons of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) in recent weeks.

* Utility said the laptop wasn’t connected to the power grid
* Homeland Security alerted power providers to search for code

Computer code connected to Russian cyberattacks by U.S. intelligence agencies has been found hidden in a laptop at a Vermont public utility, a development that emerged a day after the Obama administration hit Russia with sanctions for hacking in this year’s U.S. election.

The laptop wasn’t connected to the power grid at the time, the Burlington Electric Department said in a statement Friday. It said it scanned its computer network and found the malware after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent out an alert about the code to owners and operators of critical infrastructure.

“We took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding,” utility spokesman Mike Kanarick said in the statement. “Our team is working with federal officials to trace this malware and prevent any other attempts to infiltrate utility systems. We have briefed state officials and will support the investigation fully.”

WNU Editor: The Washington Post is pushing this story (it is behind a paywall) .... Russia-linked malware found on US electric company's laptop(Washington Post) .... but it is raising more questions than answers. For one .... they found this code one day after the warning was issued by DHS .... I know a little bit about computers, doing a review and finding a code this fast is next to impossible. Two .... the computer that was infected was not even linked to the grid .... so why the panic? Three .... malware and in its many forms are everywhere on the internet .... the claim that it is Russian is a stretch in my book.

Update #4: Not surprising .... this story is now getting ripped apart as "fake news" ....

So writes Army Lt. Col. Terrence Buckeye in the new issue of ARMOR magazine.

After two years of teaching at the Australian Army’s School of Armour, he reports, “My primary takeaway from this assignment is that Australian mounted tactics training at the company level and below is much better than our U.S. tactics.” They’re notably better at live fire training, he adds.

If you don’t believe me, he adds, just go and look. “For those who doubt how poor our tactics training is now, a visit to an Australian ROBC [Regimental Officer Basic Course] or Crew Commander’s Course (six-week tactics course for corporal and sergeant vehicle commanders) will likely change your view.”

Islamist terrorism is the biggest challenge facing Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said in her New Year message.

Referring to the deadly truck attack in Berlin by a Tunisian asylum seeker, she said it was "sickening" when acts of terror were carried out by people who had sought protection.

She said 2016 had been a year of "severe tests".

But she also said she was confident Germany could overcome them.

"As we go about our lives and our work, we are saying to the terrorists: 'You are hate-filled murderers, but you do not determine how we live and want to live. We are free, considerate and open'," Mrs Merkel said.

Twelve people were killed when Anis Amri drove a truck at crowds at a Berlin Christmas market two weeks ago.

U.S soldiers execute a fire mission to support Iraqi security forces during the Mosul counteroffensive in northern Iraq, Dec. 24, 2016. The soldiers are assigned to Battery C, 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, Task Force Strike, which is supporting the Iraqi forces with indirect fire in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Army photo by 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson

Friday, December 30, 2016

The suffering of the Russian people did not end with Wold War I, the Bolshecik Revolution, and the Civil War. The destruction and devastation resulted in a terrible famine, made worse by the Bolshevik willingness to use food as a weapon. The most vulnerable were the children. This photograph was taken somewhere in the Volga region (1921-22).

* The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, occurred in Bolshevik Russia
* It began in early spring of 1921 and lasted through 1922
* Civil war and Lenin's policy of seizing food from peasants caused the devastating man-made famine
* Around 30 million people were affected and around five million died
* WARNING: Distressing images

Standing solemnly in their thick winter coats behind a table laden with children's body parts, this is the grave photo of a couple that shows how starving people turned to cannibalism to survive during a man-made famine in 1920s Russia.

More than five million people died during the catastrophe, which began in 1921 and lasted through 1922.

Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, had been in charge of the country since 1917. In a chilling disregard for the suffering of his fellow countrymen he instructed food to be seized from the poor.

Lenin's Bolsheviks party believed peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort and by taking their food away it reduced their strength.

The famine was able to take root with ease due to the economic problems caused by World War I, five years of civil war, and a drought in 1921 which led to 30 million Russians becoming malnourished.

WNU Editor: I was surprised to read this in a Western news site .... and the Daily Mail of all websites. But they are onto something. Everyone in Russia has a story on how their parents and grandparents suffered during this time .... especially after the Bolsheviks had solidified their power .... so for most Russians this is really not news. And while most Russians do not talk about their family history publicly .... these is now a push in Russia to educate the public .... starting within the school system .... on how brutal the Soviet state was towards its citizens after they came to power in 1917. Fortunately .... it will not be hard to make this case. Just like the Nazis who documented their atrocities .... so did the Soviets .... documenting and photographing the ravages of the famines that they caused. My friends in the Russian government tell me that the government continues to maintain the archives of this period. But because of its content .... especially the tens of thousands of pictures and hundreds of news reels that document this catastrophe .... they are still reluctant to release it to the public (they just do the bits here and there). I give it another 10 years before this history is finally open for all to see .... if not sooner. And when that happens .... that is when I predict the debate will start to get very interesting ... within Russia .... and definitely outside of Russia.

Nearly a decade and a half after the Iraq-WMD faceplant, the American press is again asked to co-sign a dubious intelligence assessment.

In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails.

"These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote.

Russia at first pledged, darkly, to retaliate, then backed off. The Russian press today is even reporting that Vladimir Putin is inviting "the children of American diplomats" to "visit the Christmas tree in the Kremlin," as characteristically loathsome/menacing/sarcastic a Putin response as you'll find.

This dramatic story puts the news media in a jackpot. Absent independent verification, reporters will have to rely upon the secret assessments of intelligence agencies to cover the story at all.

Many reporters I know are quietly freaking out about having to go through that again. We all remember the WMD fiasco.

WNU Editor: I expect more questions and doubts on the U.S. case against Russia to be raised after the holidays. I also expect many in Congress and in the Senate stepping up to demand the imposition of even more sanctions.

Ma Jian, who ran counter-espionage at the State Security Ministry, tried to hide wealth, use his power to help relatives’ businesses and interfere with the judiciary, Communist Party says

China will prosecute a former senior spy chief for bribery and abuse of power, the Communist Party said in a brief statement on Friday.

Ma Jian led counter-espionage operations at the Ministry of State Security, the vast secretive intelligence agency that monitors both citizens and foreigners in China.
His detention, which the South China Morning Post first reported in January 2015, led to revelations about massive abuses of power and political jockeying within the intelligence agency.

A Kurdish-Arab force is closing in on the Islamic State’s capital in Syria, but there is still no plan to seize it.

TAL SAMAN, Syria — “Raqqa we are coming” say the words spray-painted in Kurdish at the entrance to this empty little town, which lies on the front line of a U.S.-backed advance toward the Islamic State’s capital.

The city of Raqqa is 17 miles away, a tantalizingly short hop to the place showcased in the militants’ propaganda videos as an Islamist utopia, where the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels were planned and where, U.S. officials warn, new plots against the West are being forged.

But a full offensive to retake the city could still be months or more away, despite hopes in Washington that an operation to take the Islamic State’s most symbolically significant stronghold would be well underway before President Obama left office.

A rare visit to the Raqqa front line illustrated how near and yet far off the defeat of the Islamic State may be. The battle for Mosul in neighboring Iraq has stalled, the attack in Berlin has brought home the continued threat of terrorism, and there is still no plan for an offensive on Raqqa, making the war one of the most immediate, and complicated, challenges the Trump administration will have to confront.

WNU Editor: Here is another interesting story on the frontlines in the battle against the Islamic State in Mosul .... Inside an ISIS Bunker (Kimberly Dozier, Daily Beast). Also a photo gallery ....The Frontlines of Mosul (Reuters).

The people of Mozambique has welcomed a seven day ceasefire to end hostilities between Renamo opposition fighters and the ruling Frelimo government. Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, declared the truce on Tuesday to allow the public to enjoy the New Year festivities. It comes after an upsurge in fighting that has displaced thousands.

The truce comes at the end of a gruelling year, with rights groups reporting that more than 15,000 people have been forced to flee the fighting between Renamo opposition fighters and the ruling Frelimo government this year alone.

Iraqi forces faced car bombs and fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks.

An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighborhoods, disabling a number of car bombs.

Another officer, from an elite Interior Ministry unit fighting alongside federal police, said his forces were gaining ground in the Intisar district despite heavy clashes there.

Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.

Clashes, shelling and air raids in western Syria marred a Russian- and Turkish-backed ceasefire that aims to end nearly six years of war and lead to peace talks between rebels and a government emboldened by recent battlefield success.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced the ceasefire on Thursday after forging the agreement with Turkey, a longtime backer of the opposition.

The truce went into force at midnight but monitors and rebels reported almost immediate clashes, and violence appeared to escalate later on Friday as warplanes bombed areas in the country's northwest, they said.

About Me

I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.